“I got a storm cellar a half mile from here!” yelled Mr. Daniels, who owned a modern ranch up Route 33, settled nicely within three-hundred acres and a hundred head of milking cows. “I can fit at least twenty of us.”
Pastor Willard nodded, as if placating a child who was showing off his newest finger-painting. “That’s fine, Bob, just fine. Now, let’s move orderly, okay?”
The church doors battered their frames, harder by the second, the wind screeching outside the thin walls like a swarm of banshees. Pastor Willard nodded to his flock one last time, turned, and stepped briskly to the entrance. He pushed the arm-bar that unlatched the door.
There was a sharp BANG that made Carrie jump despite the other commotion. The door had whipped open, torn from the pastor’s hands and slung hard against the outside wall by a violent slap of wind.
“Oh!” he cried, and reached for it, as if to pull it closed again. People began to surge, to shove at him from behind. “Just wait a damn second!” he roared, trying to be heard over the tumult. The wind pushed his silver hair away from his head, flowers blew off a nearby table, and Mrs. Hallemann’s wide-brimmed hat flipped and soared like a wobbling flying saucer back toward the chapel. Hail spattered the floor of the entryway, sprinkling across the blue-gray carpet of the foyer like beads spilled from a pearl necklace.
Something outside cracked louder than thunder. A hand grabbed Carrie’s arm and tugged her backward. She had time to see the pastor struggling with a man in a dark blue suit. A woman was fighting to get past them both, pulling a little blonde-haired boy with her, the terrified child screaming at the top of his lungs.
The roof above Carrie’s head exploded. The wall above the doors burst inward with a plume of drywall dust and splinters, blasting a cloud of debris into the foyer.
The mighty oak had been ripped free of its poisoned roots and now finished its fall, the enormous trunk crashing against the aged doors with the bulk and velocity of a school bus dropped from the sky. Pastor Willard, the man in the blue suit, and the woman holding the hand of her tow-headed child evaporated in a floor-shaking crunch. A dousing spray of red mist decorated the people surging forward in crimson, coating their faces, their fine dresses and suits.
Carrie fell hard to the ground, pulling Beth down with her, and noticed her dress had gone from white to pink, the blood that burst from the crushed bodies of the pastor and the others, like juice from a fat grape, had coated her from toe-to-chest. She opened her mouth to speak but was surprised – and a touch concerned – when nothing came out but an incoherent wheeze.
The reasonable part of her brain, the logical override that had been flipped to extinguish the unbelieving sensory organs, stared blankly at the exit, now blackened by the bark of an oak tree high as a man, littered with pieces of church. And churchgoers! part of her mind insisted. But she shoved that thought away, let logic take the controls once more.
As you can see, dear, Logic said, its inner voice steady, almost relaxed in its precision, the exit, quite obviously, is now blocked. And time, I fear, is of the essence.
“There’s a door in the back!” someone yelled, but now things seemed lost. Carrie realized, quite lucidly, that things had suddenly spiraled completely out of control.
The panicked mob surged back toward the chapel, colliding with those who had either waited patiently or were trying to push their way into the foyer to see what the hell had happened. The two forces collided and there were more screams—men yelling, children crying, women clawing to get through, to get back, to get OUT.
Carrie felt arms reach around her waist from behind and try to lift her to her feet. But she couldn’t move, couldn’t think of what to do with her legs, with the muscles of her body. How do I stand? she thought, and looked at her blood-smeared hands in a daze, as if the answers were written upon dripping palms. She watched, emotionless, as a little girl in a pink dress and white leggings fell – no, was pushed – into the edge of a pew, her head smacking the dense wood hard enough that Carrie heard the thud of impact amidst the chaos. The girl fell to the ground and was stomped upon like a rag doll, her mother Mrs. Baker, I think, yes, Mrs. Baker my senior high school teacher I loved her she always brought in cookies on Fridays was trying to yank the girl to her feet, screeching and baring her teeth at the others crowding past her in a frenzy for escape.
More hands grabbed Carrie and this time she was able to find her feet, allow herself to be lifted from the floor. Her mother stared at her, shook her, pleading. “We’ve got to go, honey! We’ve got to get out of here!”
Carrie nodded and started to let herself be pressed toward the chapel, where the crowd heading toward the back had soundly defeated those who had been heading toward the front. She spun her head back toward the hallway, toward the office where she had seen Eli lying on the floor. But she could not move, could not free herself as she was shoved mercilessly forward, into the chapel where people were filling the aisle, tearing to shreds the white paper runner that had been laid for her walk to the altar. Others were climbing over the backs of pews, rushing toward a distant door…
The tall arched windows that lined the east side of the church burst inward as one. Shards of glass flew like a hail of bullets toward those trapped inside. More screams rang out and a few people collapsed, grabbing at their heads, at legs, at necks. One woman had both hands over her face, an inhuman howl coming from within, blood spurting between her knuckles.
“Oh no!” her mother screamed from beside her. “Oh God, no!”
Carrie turned toward the windows. The view of sky and cornfields had been obliterated by a funnel wider than a football field. It filled the world. She watched in stunned amazement at its sheer power, at the fibrous musculature of the churning air, blackened and pulsing, and hungry – God help them, it was hungry.
The building shook, and Carrie saw pieces of the church vanish, sucked away, pulled toward this embodiment of earth’s vengeance, this smoky, churning fist of a deadly god. She raised her eyes to the ceiling as part of the chapel’s roof blew apart and vanished. Those nearest the gaping hole were pulled into the air, as if lifted by invisible rope.
There was another surge of bodies and Carrie was shoved to the floor between two pews. Beth and her mother fell with her. They clutched at each other, as if one of them had the power to save the other.
Then the east wall of the church disappeared, replaced by a broad veil of indescribable force, the thick foul funnel having finally arrived, late to the ceremony.
THE SIREN WAILED as if from a distant harbor, the office windows rattled ceaselessly with the force of hurricane-force gusts, and the sounds of panic from the foyer made evident what was happening to the wedding guests. Parker and his mates had heard it as well, and their interest in Eli waned with each passing second of the growing tumult, both outside and inside the small church.
“What the hell’s going on out there?” Brock asked, his foot resting with almost nonchalance on the back of Eli’s suit coat, pushing his belly into the ground.
“Storm,” Tuck said.
Parker looked down at Eli, then at his brother. “You think it’s bad?”
Brock shrugged and turned his bulbous head toward the screams coming from the foyer, just outside the pastor’s door. “Shit,” he said.
Parker nodded, stepped over Eli and opened the door to the office. Brock removed his heel from Eli’s back and followed.
There! Eli thought, the very sight of her a jolt of hot current to his brain. Carrie…
From his vantage point on the floor, his head swimming, his jaw throbbing painfully, he saw past the legs of the brothers and into the lobby. He saw Carrie standing white as an angel, more radiant and beautiful than he’d ever thought possible. He would have smiled if the muscles of his jaw had deigned to respond to his brain’s commands.
He watched the pastor take her by the arms, then a swarm of people surged into his line-of-sight, and she was pulled away. The roof above was being beaten by hail, and the winds, already at a seemingly impossible pitch, were picking up speed. Eli forced himself to his elbows, then his hands and knees. Tuck ran out the door, following the brothers who had disappeared into the thicket of guests crowding toward the exit like a dressed-up murder of hungry crows fighting for a spill of fresh guts.
Eli heard more yelling, then the loud crack of a slamming door. He put a hand to the desk to steady himself, stood shakily. He heard a whimper and looked down to see Henry huddled on the floor in the corner of the room, hands between his knees. My God… he’s praying.
As if realizing he was not alone, Henry looked up at Eli, his eyes white eggs of fear. “I always hated storms,” he said, his hands visibly trembling. “Even as a child, I had a recurring nightmare – night terrors, really – of a storm blowing me away. A tornado eating me up. I can’t…”
But an enormous crash from the foyer drowned out his words and shook the building. Henry screamed, then moaned loudly. Eli was sure the kid had wet himself but couldn’t find the time to care because through the open door he watched the entire front of the building crash inward, saw the gnarled limb of a giant tree stick its length into the church foyer as if reaching for a life to take. Blood was everywhere. People were screaming full-throated and pushing away from the doors, back into the church.
“Carrie!” he yelled. He had just taken his first step toward the chapel, toward the destruction, when a hand clutched his leg. He looked down to see Henry holding him back, still crying, yelling something about being alone, about being taken away. Heat built in Eli’s chest and with wide red-rimmed eyes he bound ropes of air tightly around Henry’s body that raised him from the floor, his arms and legs locked, his eyes slipping from fear to shock to horror.
“Eli!” he shrieked, eyes wide with shock.
Eli’s lip dipped into a snarl and with a singular thought he pushed. Henry’s body flew backward hard enough that his palms met his shoe-tips. He crashed through the window like a foul ball and was swallowed by the raging storm.
More shouts rang out, mingled with the sounds of the building being ripped apart. The jet-engine whine of the great whirlwind had fully manifested, devouring and destroying all in its path.
